When I was a Witch By Paul Dale Anderson

Among the many reasons I became a board-certified hypnotist, hypnosis instructor, and past-life regression therapist, was a life-long fascination with witches.

I’d always suspected that my grandmother had been a witch, my aunt had been a witch, and my wife was a witch. It wasn’t until I experienced past-life regression that I recalled I, too, had once upon a time been a witch.

Writers, like witches, live most of their creative lives in altered states. We walk between multiple worlds. We bend and shape reality with our imaginations. There is nothing we cannot do when we set our minds to it.

Now, you’re probably saying to yourselves, “Men can’t be witches. Women are witches. Men are wizards or warlocks or alchemists. How dare you call yourself a witch?”

What you learn when you recall past lives is that all men were women at least once. And all women were men at least once. We all possess both animus and anima, as Carl Jung correctly postulated, although the archetypes of the collective unconscious manifest primarily in dream states.

When I was a witch, I was burned at the stake because I happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I don’t often tell people I’m a witch. You see, who and what we are never dies. We are reincarnated in different bodies and in different places and times, but who we really are never changes.

I’m still a witch at heart. And I’m afraid of being burned.

Witches can transform themselves. We can become cats or dogs, wolves or bats. We can be male or female, good or evil or anything in-between. We can hide in shadows or live in the light.

Most of the time, unfortunately, we forget who we are and become what others expect of us.

Each year, at the precise moment brisk October transitions into frigid November and the veils between worlds temporarily part, we’re able to remember who and what we really are without the help of a certified past-life regression therapist. We can recall essential parts of each of our past lives, how events shaped who we are today. Nightmares become dreams peopled with recurrent images of magical beings we recognize as friends and lovers or previous selves long gone.

It is then that we may remove everyday costumes and masks, don the robes of wisdom to parade around in public without fear of being hanged or burned at the stake, and reveal who we really are.

It is only during the rest of the year that we must hide even from ourselves.

I’m a witch. If you believe in magic, you’re a witch, too. It makes no difference if you’re male, female, human or inhuman. Take my word for it, you can be all of those things.

You areall of those things.

What will you reveal about yourself this Halloween? Who are you, really?

I’m a witch. I’m William Butler Yeats’ small slate-colored thing!

BIO: Paul Dale Anderson has written dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, is an Active Member of SFWA, HWA and MWA, and was elected Vice President and Trustee of Horror Writers Association in 1987. He is a current member of International Thriller Writers, Author’s Guild, and Sisters in Crime. Paul is also an NGH Certified Hypnotist, an NGH Certified Hypnotism Instructor, a certified Past-Life Regression Therapist, and a certified professional member of the International Association for Regression Research and Therapies.